Fat Free Cottage Cheese - We hate the taste and texture of cottage cheese. Most of us also eat at least five pounds of those chunky curds a week. Our secret for making this stuff palatable? We blend it with protein powders and make puddings and thick shakes out of it. Why do we go through all that trouble? Easy, cottage cheese is a great source of casein, one of the best proteins for bodybuilders.
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You?ll want to stick to the fat free kind and avoid the creamed varieties because of their “bad” fat content. Sure, the fat free kind is a little bitter, but if you use it as a base for other foods like we do, then that doesn?t matter much. Besides, if you can bang out high rep squats or inject yourself with steroids, you can certainly eat cottage cheese, ya big wuss!
T-mag: You’re not a fan of milk, but you don’t mind other dairy products like cottage cheese or even whipping cream. Why is this? Also, what type of cottage cheese do you recommend?
ES: …
Cottage cheese is one cheese that’ll actually elevate sugar and insulin levels. I’d recommend organic, high fat (the highest you could find) cottage cheese.
A perfect example of EXACTLY what’s wrong with the fitness and nutrition world…
Thoughts on this? Fat-free or highest-fat possible?
I hear what you’re saying. It’s frustrating to get contradicting information, especially on the exact same site (I’m not just talking about the cottage cheese either).
Everyone talks about cutting through the BS, but in the long run it always seems as cloudy as when you started.
I’m going with fat free, because regardless of the insulin response stuff and whatever else JB might have to say about it, Serrano recommended high fat. I think Serrano generally sucks, so I usually want to do the opposite of what Serrano says.
Hell I just use the 2% which is right in the middle of the road.
However, when Im cutting I dont eat it at all, I sub with a quick can of tuna. When bulking its perfectly fine and I wouldnt sweat this minor detail.
I would not eat the higher fat content if I was eating the cottage cheese with carbs. If I were eating it alone then maybe. If I were eating a high carb meal with it then Id think the fat free is the best. Basically the whole dont mix fat and carbs. But, to be honest I dont sweat that little bit of difference when it comes to the cheese.
With all due respect to Serrano, when it comes to nutritional recommendations I’ll take Berardi any day of the week and twice on Sunday (or however that phrase goes).
That said, I seriously doubt picking one variety over the other is going to make or break your diet. I think this definitely falls into the “minutae” category.
I wrote that part of the “Foods…” article. Why fat free? Well, I wrote that most of us around T-mag mix it with other stuff like protein powder or flax anyway, so no worries about the GI. Assuming Serrano is correct, you’d only have to worry about insulin when eating it by itself. So he recommends high fat to blunt the insulin response.
Also, I suggested fat free to avoid the fats in cottage cheese, which aren’t the good kind. (No, I’m against getting some saturated fats - I see no prob with whole eggs and some red meat.)
Lastly, fat free or low fat cottage cheese makes it easy to follow the P+C and P+F guidelines because it’ll go with just about any meal. So fat free or low fat is more versatile.
The really scary part about this post is that it seems a few of you are wanting “The Answer” to every issue. Sorry, it doesn’t exist in most cases. You’ll find smart people on both sides of every issue.
Would you rather T-mag demand that all its contributors (and everyone we interview) say the exact same thing? Gosh, I’d hate for people to have to weigh both sides, experiment to see what works best for them and (gasp!) think critically! That would be bad.
I don’t remember who said it, but someone once wrote that when all men think alike, no one thinks very much. Wise stuff there.
Zulu - While I agree that the fat-free fanatics of the past were wrong, there is such a thing as bad fat. If not, well hell, fried cheese sticks and ranch dressing for everybody!
Talk about a contradiction. In T-Dawg 2.0, it states to eat: “Cottage cheese (regular, not low-fat)”
In the next paragraph, it states: “Note: While some saturated fat is okay on this diet, it’s healthier to keep intake in check. So we suggest using fat free dairy products like cheese and cottage cheese…”
What’s so difficult for you guys? What’s the big contradiction? Different researchers, nutritionsits, and coaches have slightly different opinions on an issue? Wow! LOL, say it ain’t so!
Aren’t you being a bit to anal. Shouldn’t we all understand that the world of health and fitness and physique enhancement is an ever evolving field and that there might just be at any given time conflicting ideas. If you’ll recall Serrano’s interview conflicted with a lot of ideas and generated a lot of debate on the forum, big deal!
Chris:
Don’t be confused, most tmag readers appreciate that tmag interviews and use ideas and work from across the field, and most of us aren’t lazy people who refuse or are scared to think for ourselves and make our own choices, especially when it’s a dbate over an arguably small topic.
Everyone Else:
Take care of the basics! Once those are taken care of take care of the slightly less basic, and so on, don’t get hung up and frustrated because of discrepencies!
Jeff, I don’t see that. Are you sure you’re looking at the latest version of the diet? I think an earlier version did say that; it was just an oversight and I think we corrected it in 2.0. Two people wrote that article (myself and TC) and we must have disagreed without realizing it. But the latest version of the diet should not have that mistake in it.
I think this is a great observation that is not exclusive to training and nutrition. I believe it’s a trait of good science–people like Serrano and JB conduct studies and read studies and study study study, but there are so many variables in studies that they’re skewed very easily. Good science is done by TRYING to get it right–continuous testing and subjecting theories to the toughest scrutiny. The answers exist, we just try to uncover them.
Maybe high fat cottage cheese is great for you, maybe its terrible, or maybe it’ll turn out that it doesn’t matter much. When reading things here, or anywhere, ideas should be run through your filter of previous knowledge and supositions, and your decision of whether or not to agree should follow.
Chris, I actually just realized that you did update the article. I was looking at T-Dawg 2.0, but it was the version I saved on my hardrive when the article first came out.
I am glad to see you caught that and fixed it. Sorry for the confusion.
Agathos, the confusing part wasn’t the fact that it came from separate sources but the same article. Obviously Chris and T.C. fixed this and I didn’t realize it until after my first post, but hopefully you can see where my confusion came from.
Cottage cheese works great while cutting (for me anyway) I can easily have 1 cup of low fat a day and stay in deep ketosis. And I am by far the most carb sensitive person on the planet.
I’m far from an expert on such things, but I’ll throw in my $0.02. It seems to me that if you’re sticking with Berardi’s recommendations, you read the label on your cottage cheese and pick whichever kind works best for your P+C or P+F meals (I use the non-fat kind for P+C, but I prefer meat and/or nuts for P+F so I haven’t looked into the amount of carbs in the full fat kind). If you’re not following Berardi’s recommendations, pick the one that works best with your eating plan. No magic; just follow the rules of your diet plan.
The low-fat varieties of cottage cheese have high lactose, often added milk (sometimes whey, sometimes chemicals), and that means more insulin. Also, most kinds of milk are said to be estrogenic.
The higher-fat varieties have hardly any lactose, no whey. They’re closer to plain cheese. So here you get your casein without the insulinogenic carbs, and presumably less estrogen.
So no contradiction at all between Serrano and Berardi, as I see it. Low-fat cottage cheese with the P+C meal, (I don’t think the estrogen thing would be a problem in moderation. And high-fat cottage cheese otherwise and I think a little saturated fat is OK, particular in dairy.
